The boy and the bird. 2 potential distractions!

Top 5 Events Likely To Occur 2 Minutes Into a Writing Coaching Call
1. The Fedex man will ring the doorbell (speaker is right next to my office).
2. I will have forgotten to turn the ringer/text notification off on my phone and one of my friends will text me during the call, so my client hears “Chime Chime!”. (I am getting better at remembering to turn this off before coaching calls.)
3. I will get a notification that another call is coming through, I will ignore it, and then the person will immediately call my home number.
4. I will accidently bump the phone’s speaker button with my ear and then be confused why my client’s voice sounds so distant. At least once.
5. I will laugh at something my client says, or s/he will laugh at something I say. What’s the point of working together if you can’t have fun??

At 4 AM, my older son woke me up because he wanted some allergy medicine (tis the season in Central Pennsylvania now).

I couldn’t fall back to sleep. At 5:17 AM, I heard a loud THUD, jumped out of bed and went to my younger son’s room, where I found he had fallen out of bed. I put a very confused kiddo back to bed, then tried to get back to sleep without success. I figured I might as well start my day, so I got a shower and made some Dunkin Donuts coffee (my favorite!).

The best part of working from home is that I’m pretty sure somewhere between writing coaching calls and book editing, I will be able to sneak a power nap into my day! Shh, don’t tell anyone.

Here’s to a productive Monday–hope you all accomplish your writing goals!

Last week I went to Suzanne Evans’ “Be The Change” event in Orlando, FL. I hadn’t heard of her prior to this but one of my virtual friends had seen her at the big EWomen conference and was a fan of hers, we scored some free tickets, and decided to attend together. This was my first “Big” conference, and this was quite a spectacle. Flashing strobe and spotlights, a dance floor and DJ, a comedian (Kyle Cease, who was awesome—very funny and a smart entrepreneur, he was the perfect host).

The good: Suzanne Evans is an amazingly smart cookie. She has built a phenomenal coaching business that she is the spearhead of, and has a number of enthusiastic fans. She obviously knows her stuff. Her content was great—especially the marketing components. She was happy to answer questions and had her coaching staff available in the “coaching zone” to answer people’s business questions. She also was able to quickly get at the core reasons of why people were not succeeding in their business (fear of making more money than their husband, constantly running away from their problems, etc.). It was like a therapist on speed. I was very impressed. I came away with some excellent ideas of how to market my business more effectively and some ideas for creating some packages and products. Oh yeah–the free ticket was also a boon. Of course I had to pay airfare, hotel, most meals, etc., so there were still significant expenses. I feel very conflicted about the event. While I loved the content and Suzanne’s direct style, some other things really bothered me about the conference.

The not-so-good: I found the sales tactics predictable and annoying. You could buy Suzanne’s products in the back of the room—a variety of books, DVD programs and merchandise, which was completely reasonable, but the biggest push was for you to join her “10K Club”—a coaching program that costs, yes, as the name suggests, $10,000 for a year of coaching. You are not coached directly from Suzanne, but individually from her coaching team, and a number of group coaching virtual and in-person sessions. One very nice and classy lady I was sitting next to said she talked to Suzanne about the 10K club and Suzanne had been so hard on her “excuses” that she made the lady cry. I understand sales tactics, but Suzanne’s goal of the conference was apparently to get as many people as possible in the program and overcome objections in any way possible. While I don’t think you need a “warm and fuzzy” coach, I also think you need to strike a balance. As Suzanne herself said, not everyone is meant to be your client.

The main sponsor of the event, InfusionSoft, was given two sessions to talk about customer retention and marketing, and while the speaker seemed like a great, personable guy, the second session reviewed much of the material from the previous day, and it started to sound like an infomercial. They did offer a “today only” nice discount on their packages, which was tempting, because it seems like a great product, but I can’t quite justify it right now. Another issue I had is that her clients’ “numbers” seemed vague. She categorized people (and publicly recognized them) as “10K a month” earners, “6 figure business” earners and “7 figure business” earners. Some fellow attendees and I wanted some better numbers—what were the net jumps after Suzanne’s coaching? Sure, your business can gross $100K but that doesn’t mean much if your expenses eat up 90% of that. My biggest complaint? They crammed 630 attendees into a ballroom. Space was so tight that they tied the chairs together with zip ties. There was no space between chairs and extremely uncomfortable quarters to sit in for all day and often into the night. They should have limited the tickets, but obviously they were trying to get as many people as possible to attend the conference.

I don’t think I’d go again. I did not meet many potential clients, though several virtual assistants who work with coaches seemed to be pleased with the number of potential clients there. I did meet some people who are in complementary business to mine and we may have an opportunity to trade referrals back and forth. So those connections are always valuable. Some friends who also attended were happier with the conference than I was and some considered joining the 10K club. They said they would likely go back next year if the content would be different. To each her own, I guess. For me, the tremendous value of the content was unfortunately overshadowed by the strong sales push of the whole event. If you are considering being one of her coachees, you’d probably make up your mind one way or another after this conference.

Due to the number of work projects currently underway and lined up for the future as well as less time available for leisure reading (sadly!), book review requests are currently not being accepted. I will post on my blog when I am accepting them again. Thanks for your understanding.

Recently I was editing an audio transcript that a client is turning into a book. The information was excellent, and I’m sure it made a great teleseminar. However, it never fails to amaze me how the spoken word can be given so much more meaning and clarity simply by altering your pacing, tone and emphasis. Unfortunately, that just doesn’t translate as well into the written word. Audio transcripts produce a fun written editing task, one where I am frequently changing words for greater specificity and clarity, eliminating run-on sentences, and eliminating ambiguous pronoun references.

So, remember that reading your writing aloud helps make sure your writing is clear, but the opposite isn’t always true..spoken words don’t always make for clear writing.

Recently I was editing a book (on a financial topic) and a few times I corrected the author’s use of two commonly confused
words: “insure” and “ensure.” Because many others have trouble distinguishing the shades of meaning with these words, I
thought I’d do my part to clear up the confusion, and have thrown in a third similar word to the mix: assure. First, the
definition, then an example.

Assure: to declare earnestly, with sincere intention. “He assured her he would be forever faithful.”

Ensure: to make certain or guarantee something: “She bought her son twenty pairs of socks to ensure he was never without clean
ones between washings.”

Insure: to guarantee against loss or harm.”He insured his life for a half million dollars so his family wouldn’t struggle if
he met an early death.”

Here’s a quick cheatsheet to check your usage:
Assure: Think of the word “reassure.” Very similar meaning.
Ensure: Think of “make certain.”
Insure: Similar to ensure, but there’s usually a financial guarantee.

Maybe you’ve heard yourself saying to others, or even thinking to yourself, “I really should write a book.” There’s likely a reason. Whether you know your business information will help thousands of people, your memoir will entertain and inspire readers, or your romance novel will make women swoon over your hero, there’s a reason to listen to that quiet voice nagging you to publish your story.

If you’ve been afraid that you won’t have time, the money or the discipline to write a book, don’t let that stop you. It’s easier than you think, and it can be accomplished with a reasonable budget. Sure, it takes time, talent, and some organizational skills, but the effort will be worth the reward. And if you need help, either from start to finish or with various pieces of the process, lots of professionals will be happy to assist you.

So, since this is the start of a New Year, I’m going to challenge you to add “Write my book” to the rest of your goals for 2012. And if you’ve already written your book but sales aren’t what you’d like them to be, it’s not too late to step up your marketing efforts too. Each year, each week, each day can be a brand new start!

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language and next year’s words await another voice.”-Little Gidding II

Since the holiday season is approaching, I thought a non-business related post might be fun. So the topic for today is
5 Things You Probably Didn’t Know about Me:
1) I’ve flown above the ground in unconventional ways: I’ve been in a hot air balloon and learned how to skydive on the sand dunes of the Outer Banks.
2) I’ve met a few celebrities: Penn (of Penn and Teller), Ollie North, Ron Livingston (of Office Space) are the most noteable.
3) I have a strong aversion to anything with an artificial orange taste: When I was almost three, I overdosed on St. Joseph’s baby aspirin. That’s the only thing I can trace it to.
4) I used to be a radio DJ: It was at a small AM station in a small town, but it still counts.
5) I have no fingerprints: When I was applying for clearances for the schools, the FBI could not get readable fingerprints. (Does that mean I could commit the perfect crime??)

Your turn: What are 5 things I don’t know about you? Comment below!

After the 100th time of being frustrated trying to find a matching lid to one of my disposable food storage containers, I added more of them to my grocery list. Then, when I had some downtime recently, I decided the cabinet where I stored them needed to be organized. I took every container and every lid out, and slowly but surely matched all I could. Surprisingly, I found that, yes, I had many orphan containers and lids, but I also had so many useable storage containers with lids that I didn’t need to buy any more.

There was so much clutter in that cabinet that I thought I’d need to throw the whole lot out and start over. Sure, some containers and lids I had to throw out because they either didn’t match up with anything or they were just in too bad of shape. But the vast majority, once sorted, now met my needs and I could cross those items off my shopping list.

A few days ago, I had a conversation with a client about her blog. She has lots and lots of content out there in the web, in audio interviews and in books she’s written, yet she struggles to routinely come up with regular and meaningful blog posts. It wasn’t necessary for this client to go out and create all new content. All she needed to do was to take time and evaluate what material she had, find the pieces that matched up and still had life in them, then start filing them in her “writing cabinet” of potential blog posts.

You can do the same thing. Take a look through your computer files. Create a new folder of “Blog Post Ideas” and start copying previous articles, tips and any other writing into it. Hire someone to transcribe some audio interviews or podcasts you’ve done. Then, evaluate what you have. Like the containers and lids, see what matches up and stacks up. Maybe you can break one article into multiple parts for a blog post. Maybe you can combine pieces of a few different writings to create a whole new concept or a spin on an existing one.

No, this doesn’t mean you’ll never need to come up with a new piece of writing. You will. I’m sure one day I’ll need to actually buy those disposable storage containers again, but for now simply sorting through what I had will provide me with enough material to last me a while. Since my kitchen cabinet is now organized, I’ll take my own advice and check out my old content and idea files, including the ten half-written blog post “drafts” my new web designer reminded me I had just sitting there. I can’t wait to dig in!

Since everyone is using November to share what they are most thankful for, I’ve decided to share mine (with a business spin). Let me know what yours are too!

1)      Books: Without them, my life would be a lot more dull (reading for fun) and my income would be a lot lower (editing/promoting them)!

2)      My Virtual Colleagues: Some of the people I’m closest to I see only once a year or less. Yet, I value their friendship and mentorship and I appreciate how they stave away the loneliness of working from home.

3)      The Chicago Manual of Style: It answers almost all my questions of: “Do I edit this sentence this way or that way?”

4)      My Kindle Fire: For why I love this toy, read my initial review.

5)      My Bookkeeper: I can’t live without Candy and Lanel of Offassist. I’ve tried. They’ll be my bookkeepers until I close the doors on my business.

6)      Systems: From my proposal template to my work agreement to my editing process, the systems I’ve developed for my business help keep me organized and save me lots of time. I’ve developed them for clients too and they’ve loved them!

7)      Conferences: There’s just no substitute for getting out of the four walls of your home office, being around like-minded colleagues and learning new tools to grow your business in whichever way you want. My favorite this year was definitely Accelerate Live. Next year’s is on a cruise ship. I can’t wait.

8)      My Clients: I’ve had some great new clients lately—ones I can partner with and help on an ongoing basis. That’s the direction I want to move my business in—more ongoing, consistent work with some clients who are a great mutual fit. Without valued clients, there is just no need for me to be in business.

9)      My iPhone: I feel like an “old timer” but I can remember the days when unless I had a laptop or was somewhere with a computer, if I wasn’t sitting at my desk in my home office, I couldn’t check, respond, or send emails. I felt tied to my office. Now, whether I’m in an airport, at the community pool, or waiting at a doctor’s office, I can stay in touch via email, phone, and social media.

So what business items are YOU thankful for?